The spirit of the land is strong. It invites us to recognize it, engage with it, and cherish it. Am I ready?

Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.

—Martha Postlewaite

AUTUMN

When to my being’s depths I penetrate,

There stirs expectant longing

That, self-observing, I may find myself

As gift of summer sun, a seed

That warming lives in autumn mood

As germinating force of soul.

— Rudolf Steiner

HOW WE TELL OUR STORIES, HOW WE LISTEN TO OTHERS is the difference between entertainment that distracts from a more penetrating event that opens the heart, accesses inherent territory of transformation, and activates natural capacities for flexible mind, reframing our situation, and invigorating perception.

— Laura Simms

“Prairie Spring” by Willa Cather

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.

(thanks to Garnette Arledge)

Most days I sit in the what we call the “craft room” in a chair with a little stool under it upon which I place my 67 year old feet. This stool was made for me by my dad when I was 2 years old, and my mom painted a picture of a tree full of birds on it. The painting began to wear, so when I was maybe 12 years old, I repainted it.

Yesterday I became especially aware of the stool and of the immense love my parents put into making it for me. I took this love into my heart.

What a wonderful thing to know– that we can receive the gift of pure love from our parents many years later. The Inka Medicine Wheel training has also reminded me that our ancestors have gifts for us of which we can become aware and receive– even though they have passed from this earth.

We can always become aware of what we have been given, even many years later. As a 2 year old, I probably had no idea of the love my folks had put into this stool. Now my own children are in their thirties and I am awakening to a whole new level of love that was given to me at age 2.

When I did the drawing series “Things Are Alive,” (see side bar), I became aware of the intention carried by material objects. In this case, the intention was pure love.

This is my first attempt to define the Pachakuti Mesa for myself:

Personal portable altar that helps to bring heaven (mystical) and earth (ordinary) together within oneself– through sacred ritual and objects that ensoul the effulgence of Nature and the Ineffable*.

This is in no way a final definition, as the mesa is infinite in meaning, a doorway to the Ineffable.

My mesa is not yet complete. I will complete the training in December 2014 and will then be a full mesa carrier.

This is the source of my training: http://www.inkamedicinewheel.com/